Last Resort
by DallasWorth
Summary: Three teen freaks (a genius, a pyromaniac and a thief) team up to survive and thrive in the world of Resident Evil. They may not be the most professional, and they may tend to go a little overkill, but they get the job done. Note: This takes place in the Resident Evil Universe but won't have much connection to the plots or characters unless the effects are far reaching.
1. Intro to Zombie Killing: A Prologue

**So I'm just going to make a note here, at no point should you expect the characters or events of the series to show up here unless of course they're pretty dang far reaching. This is just a bunch of kids surviving in the universe in their own unique fashion. Salem and Abe, though created by me have since been handed off to their respective inspirations. That said, have fun.**

Even with a genius IQ Ema Schrödinger just couldn't understand how the little Texas town had managed to survive the apocalypse, and even less why they insisted on keeping her in school. To be honest she was rather amazed the institution was still going, mostly untouched save for the addition of a course the students had nicknamed "Zombie Killing 101." Despite its enticing name, the course was one of the dullest things she had ever encountered. She and the only two students she honestly believed were at all capable ended up sleeping, passing notes or… whatever it was Salem did throughout class.  
"I'd like you all to turn to page 30 in your manuals." Ever since the actual teacher got himself mauled on patrol they'd been stuck with a fifty-something substitute who had no idea what she was talking about.  
Ema didn't even bother to take the 46 page manual out of her bag, she had its information memorized and she honestly didn't plan on using it regardless.  
"Miss Erm... Scrodinger?"  
"Schrödinger." Ema sighed, "Like Erwin Schrödinger, the scientist? You know, an object may exist in two states if left unobserved?"  
"Don't be snappy with me miss."  
A seat behind her she could hear Salem snicker, Ema hadn't even begun getting 'snappy'.  
Ema blew a strand of blonde hair out of her face, "I was informing you of the correct pronunciation of my name. Would you like to detail what you called me for?"  
The substitute crossed her arms, "How does one dispatch one of the infected?"  
"Well the preferred method varies based on what you're fighting, something this class has failed to address, but the general rule is to go for the head. Destroy or separate the brain, which prevents the signals that would normally keep them going from taking place and therefore eliminates the threat. You can do it other ways, electrocution, fire, extreme damage, but a headshot or a solid blow with a blunt weapon is most efficient." She yawned, "Are you satisfied?"  
"And how is the infection spread?"  
"Primarily from a bite, a scratch or possibly contaminated water, but it still varies depend on the type you're catching. I have this hypothesis that there's actually several strains of the virus which would-"  
"Fine." The teacher snapped, "Miss Coventry?"  
"Present." Ema glanced back to see her friend busily sketching away at her desk. The complex circle of symbols and unfamiliar patterns had grown since she last saw it, now engulfing every inch of the desk's ugly tan surface. Salem herself looked the part for someone who would do it, her pale face was framed by dark auburn bangs, while the rest of her hair was pulled back into a waist length ponytail. Her grey-green eyes were turned down, but that didn't mean Ema couldn't catch the glint in them that just begged the teacher to start something with her. A silver pentagram hung from her neck.  
"Would you like to explain to me the early signs of infection?"  
Salem looked up, a suspiciously pleasant smile coming across her face "How about you ask someone else? I'm not really interested in dealing with you today."  
"Young Lady!"  
Something banged on the door, grabbing the sub's attention.  
She headed to the door mumbling something about teenage hooligans and opened it to shout "You're all going to de-"  
She never finished.  
Right there, sitting on top of her was one of the infected freaks. Of course.  
And then it looked up at the class with that trademark hungry stare, the sub's trachea still hanging out of its ugly maw. Of course.  
Ema hefted her backpack from the ground as she stood, "Hey Salem, how do you feel about a little morning workout?"  
"It sounds alright." She hefted her own bag.  
After a moment of calculations, Ema made a running swing with her bag, using the inertia to provide the head cracking force she couldn't achieve on her own.  
Salem came after her, smashing in the skull of a zombie that had been making an attempt to get at Ema after the first one fell, "Where'd they all come from?"  
Ema heaved up her bag again, "Irrelevant at the moment. You seen Abe today?"  
"Right here." A tall, lanky blonde with a scraggly beard stood at the other end of the hall with an axe. His blue eyes flashed with the same maniacal energy as his grin. "You girls need some help?"  
Calm in the face of destruction was probably the last thing to be expected of a 17 year old in a bloodstained "Nerd." shirt.  
Salem shook her head with a grin. "Nah, but feel free to pitch in."  
"I'm thinking we should get out of here." Ema noted, as she started running down the hall "This place is going to be taken over soon and I don't want to be here when it is. We can clear it out later."


	2. Side Effects

**Hello to any of you comming over from Luminesyra's Generator Rex Fanfic Arrow of Trust, to any of you who aren't from that side of fanfiction, I recommend it. It's a treat.**

The first month of survival was a struggle.  
The second month they took back the school.  
The third month Ema finally got to start research in her strong suit, vaccinology.  
The tenth month she screwed up royally.  
"Look Ema I know you're pretty good at this stuff and all but are you sure you want to do this?" Salem sat on one of the lab tables staring skeptically at the cheap needle in Ema's hand.  
Ema poked her thumb with the needle, "Look the rats are totally in control even after being injected with the real deal, I need to move up a notch."  
"Humans are more than a couple notches up from rats Ema." Salem's eyes read with pure frustration, "Why not move up to cats or monkeys or something."  
"The immune system of a cat is different from that of a human and I don't have access to monkeys. Really I'd love to get ahold of some ferrets or pigs or something but as it stands I don't have closer animals to model against the human immune system." Ema shrugged, "It's a necessary risk."  
"You couldn't just grab some random person off the street?"  
"Because it would go against my hypocratic oath. Self experimentation is of lesser concern."  
The other girl sighed, "What am I here for again?"  
"To keep my notes safe and shoot me in the event things go south and I try to eat your brain." Ema poked he needle into her forearm, "I've implemented a specialized enzyme to create a more immediate effect. If you have any questions ask now."  
"What are the chances of this working as planned?"  
Ema thought on that, "10 to 1, 35.684912 to one factoring in my bad luck." She pushed the end to inject the experimental vaccine. "But that is irrelevant."  
Fifteen minutes in, nothing happened.  
At forty-five minutes she could feel pain starting to radiate from the injection site, Salem caught her when she collapsed. They always took her notes by way of video because her hand writing was too difficult to read.  
Two hours in she was in too much pain to vocalize clearly. Salem set the camera on the counter and left the room.  
Three hours, everything was shifting, adapting. She'd really screwed up this time. At least she was going down for science?  
Three hours and fifty minutes, the pain was receding, she could think clearly, everything looked a little too bright.  
Four and a half hours, she could speak again.  
Five hours. She stopped the camera and slumped into the single desk in the room, pulling out a mirror from where the teacher had left it. Left bottom drawer.  
She was blessedly not suffering from any of the epidermal maladies or blatant deformities she'd come to expect. She had the same round freckled face, the same long blue and blonde streaked hair, and the same pitifully small build. Unfortunately not everything was the same, the pupils of her pretty blue eyes were enlarged, allowing in more light than was normal, and when the light hit them just so they shined like the eyes of a dog. They were surrounded by thin, red scratches where she'd clawed at them. Her mouth was even more bizzare though, her canines and the two teeth behind them had been replaced by half inch incisors clearly meant to tear things apart. Everything about her had gained a distinctly predatory feel that set her entirely on edge.  
It fascinated her.  
"What the hell sort of Zack did I just shoot myself up with?" She went to get her needle from where she left it on the table and scanned the label, "Freddy…. Urgh it was one of the nasty claw ones." She glanced to her hands, her nails were elongated and thicker than she remembered with edges like knives but nothing on the grotesque level of the zombie whose blood she'd taken to create a vaccine. It failed to explain some things though; her Zs didn't have the specialized eyes she had, or the fancy teeth. She could guess at the origins of some attributes but it was bizzare what she'd ended up with.  
She set it on her desk with the camera, after over five hours of misery and a morning of double checking her research, all she wanted was sleep.  
With reasonable caution she headed to the door and knocked, "Salem? You still out there?"  
There was a pause, "Ema?"  
Definitely Salem on the other side, Ema could recognize that voice in a heartbeat, "Nah, it's the Easter Bunny."  
"You still… You?"  
"I find that to be an illogical line of questioning firstly on the reasoning that we have no reason to believe our infected friends can speak and secondly on the reasoning that regardless of whether I was one of them I would still be 'Me' but yes. I remain mentally unaffected, I should like to conduct a few more months of waiting however, some alterations have been made by the virus and I should like to be certain they don't come to affect my behavior."  
"Let you out?"  
"Yes, but lock my room from the outside when we get there."  
The door came open and the two girls crashed into eachother, both grinning wildly.  
"Don't you ever do that again dumbass. You sounded like you were dying in there." Salem was laughing.  
"I felt like I was dying." Ema pulled away, "Got some cool new enhancements if it's not volatile though."  
She exposed her sharpened teeth for Salem to see, "If all is well and it also functions as immunity then we may have to gather a couple more human subjects. This, the nails and the alterations to the eyes including the fact that I can detect significantly more in the way of smell than before which hints towards heightened olfactory senses, and a few other clues suggesting heightened hearing and a lessened sense of touch. Yes this could prove to be beneficial as a modification for sentries or close combat soldiers."  
Salem ruffled the smaller girl's blue streaked hair, "We'll take this one step at a time, figure out your mental state then worry about the other side effects."  
"It's a vaccine, it has symptoms not side effects."  
Salem shrugged, "Same to me, I'm calling them Side Effects though, has more of a ring to it."  
Ema sighed, "Whatever you say. I'm heading off to sleep."  
"Let you out in the morning?"  
"Please."  
"Good night Side Effects."  
"That's not accura-" She stopped herself, laughing a little, "Alright fine then. Good night Pyra."


	3. Shopping Like A Badass

When Ema was finally was satisfied that her mental state was satisfactorily stable she decided to resume joining in trips to the outside world. Extensive testing had shown that the scent of the altered blood of the infected set her into a frenzy about as mindless and wild as they were, but familiar scents remained safe, likely due to a subconscious sentimentality. She wasn't a psychologist, and self-testing in the realm of psychology seemed as though it would bear skewed results, her analysis of her own mental state was not to be trusted for anything asides absolutes.  
"So we just go in and clear out the infected, carry out everything we can and that's a job well done?" Salem clarified as she walked beside Abe.  
Abe nodded, "What can I say, the man was desperate, had no one else to turn to. We were his Last Resort."  
"You really never miss a chance to use that pun do you?" Salem sighed.  
A wicked grin crossed his angular face, "We got an awesome group name why wouldn't I make use of it."  
"Because you sound like an idiot, SE back me up on this one." Salem dragged Ema into the conversation with her recently earned nickname.  
They both stared at her expectantly.  
"Puns are only funny occasionally and even then the rule with humor is to use a joke only three times if it is absolutely necessary that it be repeated. Regardless the use of an arbitrary title that was only given to convey our overkill and high cost for work is rather conceited."  
"Could you say that in English?" Abe asked.  
Salem rolled her eyes.  
"Puns are normally considered annoying. The rule of threes should be used in humor and you've used that joke more than three times. The Title "Last Resort" was given to us for our negative qualities and flaunting a title makes you sound self-absorbed." Ema looked to Salem, "Was that simple enough?"  
Abe crossed his arms, "You're self-absorbed."  
Ema rose an eyebrow, "That was an amazingly juvenile and moronic response to a logical counter towards your opinion."  
He looked to Salem.  
"She said you were being a childish idiot."  
He glared at Ema.  
She smiled at him, "What you going to do about it? Start a riot with your nonexistent crowd?"  
"Troup Pro." Ema held her hands together behind her back, "I have the feeling this place would do much better with a different name."  
Her companion's both looked to her.  
"Are you certain the vaccine didn't screw up your head SE?" Abe asked, "You're entirely off topic."  
She pointed up at the sign, "It did, but not like that. And I'm not off topic, I was commentating on the fact that we reached our destination."  
Salem stared up at the sign, "You know I think you have a point Trout Pro sounds weird."  
"Is that even a trout up there?"  
Salem shrugged and glanced back to Abe, "Do you remember what a trout even looked like? I think they might have had a thing on recognizing edible fish in that camping class where we really only did something like twice."  
"Eh no."  
Ema tilted her head, "I think they just tried to tell us how to fish, not tell us what we should eat. Not really sure, I was sketching a comic in class most of the time."  
Abe stared at the sign, "How about Carp Pro?"  
Salem shook her head, "Nah, Catfish Pro?"  
"Gar Pro?"  
"Pike Pro for sure."  
Salem sighed, "Certainly not. How about… Bass Pro."  
There was a moment of silence.  
"Nah I don't like it."  
"Sounds stupid."  
"It was worth a shot."  
Abe popped his knuckles, "So in we go?"  
Salem pulled her riffle from her shoulder, "In we go."  
They headed in together weapons at the ready, for Abe that meant a riot shield on one arm and a nightstick in the opposite hand, for Salem that meant a loaded riffle that had been modified with a bayonet and a highly specialized flamethrower of sorts and for Ema it was her teeth and quickly growing claw like nails. The first thing to set upon them was the dogs, at least ten or twenty of them. She'd heard horror stories about these things, packs of infected Dobermans taking out trained teams of soldiers. An infected Pitbull biting through armor, it got horrific actually. The mutts were the worst though, mixed packs of street dogs that may not be specialized to kill but were certainly varied enough to cause trouble.  
Abe cracked one across the head with his nightstick, forcing it's skull to break with one powerful blow.  
Blood spattered across the floor like liquefied rubies.  
And that smell, the sweet iron scent tainted by something that was seriously wrong. That got her going.

Salem shot down Zs coming at them from the distance as she watched Ema take off in a furious blur of yellow and blue. And red, lots of red. She was like a wild bloody hurricane tearing through the infected. The Zs seemed pretty shocked too, Ema said they didn't expect her to attack since she smelled like one of their own and covered in blood going on one of her rampages she certainly looked the part. Whatever the case it made it easier to get a clear shot when the zack were stunned.  
"Bet I can take out more than you can!" Abe deflected dogs with his shield as she swung her riffle to take down some sort of beagle mix with her bayonet. Couldn't just shoot when there were Zs up close. That would be wasteful.  
She laughed, "Oh please Abe, we both know I've got you beat in a fight. You can only take them if they come to you."  
"Not true." He made a running leap to kick one of the humanoid zombies in the chest, "I can go to them as well."  
Salem shot one from behind him, "Yeah but I can just take them from here."  
His clear blue eyes were glittering with challenge, "Yeah, but I can still get more supplies than you."  
With which he took an admittedly impressive jump over the rail holding the infected back and grabbed a cart, swinging his nightstick like a madman all the while.  
"Yeah right." She wasn't nearly as acrobatic, so her entry to the bigger fight was admittedly less badass; what with the need to reload as she ran and all, but she wasn't about to let that stop her. She had more experience fighting off zombies and grabbing supplies than Ema and Abe combined. She wasn't about to get beaten out by a couple of rookies.  
She jumped onto a cart and pushed off riding through the hoard past some old Trout Pro brand candy like an over excited child.  
Yeah they weren't the most mature lot.  
She swung furiously as she moved through the store, filling her cart with food goods, random camping supplies and… a fishing rod. Because clearly they lived anywhere near a place where that could be used. There wasn't a body of water for miles.  
Ema slammed something to the ground in the aisle beside her; although she wasn't the most agile of the bunch when she was feeling like herself, she certainly knew how to use her surroundings when she was worked up. To bring anything down like that she must've come down on it from atop the shelves.  
"Thanks!"  
She had no confidence her friend was even listening.  
Salem forced her way to the ammo in a haze of blood and bullets before realizing the aisle was mostly cleared, "What the-"  
Abe passed by, the bottom of his cart piled with every sort of bullet, "Missing something?"  
She took a can from her cart and threw it at him.  
To her dismay he caught it rather than getting hit, "Thanks!"  
And he was gone.  
Thoroughly peeved she headed to the other side of the store to gather supplies.  
The swarm of zombies had cleared significantly, now she only saw a few live ones every couple aisles.  
Something big fell from the ceiling around the center of the store.  
Ema passed above her on top of the shelves, heading straight towards it.  
"I suppose I should go help."  
The center of the store was devoted to boats, something that amused her since there was nowhere to use a boat until you were about three towns over.  
Among the pointless machines was something repulsive. At some point the thing had been human, though she only knew that because of the scraps of clothes hanging off of it. Mostly it was a bloated, grotesque beast with mottled skin and hands like sledgehammers.  
Ema was jumping about it, dodging blows as best she could. No matter how hard Ema seemed to strike the beast seemed unperturbed. Her blows were like papercuts to it.  
She set her cart to the side and pointed her gun at where she supposed its head was and fired out a round.  
Not powerful enough, she'd have to move closer.  
"Wow, you're a big boy aren't you?" Abe was walking towards it, shield and stick at the ready, cart several feet away and completely full.  
It roared as Ema attempted to get a grip, throwing her several yards away. The girl, who could hardly weigh 90 pounds, slammed into the side of a boat with a loud whine that made Salem think of a hurt dog before she sunk to the ground.  
She would have been worried, but Ema pulled herself up again, shook it off and went running back into the fray while Abe started beating at it.  
As much as she respected the two's prowess, she doubted they'd be able to really do any damage.  
Stealthily as she could, she crept closer to the monster before finding a vantage point on one of the boats and firing off a few rounds in rapid succession.  
That did some damage.  
The monstrous thing threw its fists into the boat she was standing in while she reloaded, throwing her to the ground.  
Ema and Abe went at it from the other side, drawing its attention away from Salem.  
She loaded, and then she did something stupid.  
She started to climb the monster. It would have attacked her but its hands were busy with an admittedly ferocious looking Abe and Ema.  
"Hasta La Vista Baby." She jammed her bayonet into its skull and fired.  
Blood went everywhere.  
"Terminator? Really?" Abe dragged Ema out of the way as the beast fell, oblivious to her attempts to escape. Salem rode it down, mostly because she had no choice, and yanked her gun out of the mush that was left, "You have a better line?"  
They cleared the store, filled a third cart for Ema and dragged her out with them.  
As soon as she started to come around the little blonde was interrogating them about what she couldn't remember.  
All in all, an average day.


	4. Down the Rabbit Hole

"So who won?" Ema asked as she rubbed the blood off her arms with a wet cloth, leaning on her cart as she walked a few paces behind her companions.  
"I did." Abe responded happily, "I gathered more supplies because Pyra here is useless at gathering for large groups."  
The little blonde slumped down on her cart, "There's no need to be mean about it."  
"I wasn't mean, I just stated a fact. She's not good at dealing with big groups and her only real talent is for destroying things, personally I think it's rather stupid that we keep her in charge."  
"Because some kleptomaniac freak that skipped half his classes is so much the better option." Salem didn't even bother to look away from her course, "You're an uneducated criminal. If we put The Great Rioter in charge the others would just riot to have someone else running the show."  
"Ha ha very funny." Abe started going a little faster, "With you in charge it's a miracle the place hasn't burned down."  
"With you in charge it _would_ burn down." Salem huffed as she straightened her plain black hoodie."  
They both glared.  
"We don't need to argue over this." Ema moved to wipe the blood away from her mouth, starting to look less feral as the ugly red splotches vanished.  
"You know if anyone should be in charge it should be Side Effects over there. She _is_ the smart one." Salem commented with bitter sarcasm, "Better than you Mr. I'm gonna go off and do everything on my own."  
Ema's already large blue eyes went wide, giving her the appearance of a startled deer, "I don't want anything to do with leading. I have my lab and I'm happy and please don't drag me into this."  
"I know and that's why I'm in charge." Salem nodded, "Because he's dumb and you're busy."  
"Oh shut up Salem, you wouldn't get a sniff without me." Abe's caustic tone left the air with the heavy implication of a challenge.  
That was the issue of living in a world where they had to fight for survival was that only the agressive were able to make it. In a group of notably agressive individuals, power struggles were bound to happen. Even when their arrangement had been working out so well.  
"Please, I'd be fine on my own, it's you I'd be concerned about. Reckless idiot, you'd probably turn within a week."  
"Oh really? Because if I remember your time alone ended with a rescue crew carrying you into town half dead. You'd be screwed Salem, just admit it."  
"Guys?" Ema pleaded, but they weren't listening anymore.  
"There were extenuating circumstances in that and you know it. Out here I'd be fine." Salem snapped, the green in her eyes lighting up with challenge.  
"Prove it."  
Abe's words hung in the air for a moment, heavy with challenge.  
There was only one way this could end.  
"Fine."  
It sounded like such a small word for something so definite, but there it was. Salem stepped back from her cart and pulled her dark auburn hair back in a ponytail before slinging her riffle over her shoulder. She filled a small bag with bullets, a couple cans of food and a water bottle before turning and heading off back towards Ema's direction, "I assume you'll be able to get my cart back to the school. Ema if he screws up and you guys need me back to fix the problems caused by his incompetence I trust you can figure out how to find me."  
The turn of events had been coming since the first started working together but the little blonde couldn't help but be stunned.  
She watched Salem walk, no, saunter off into the distance until she vanished into the empty city streets.  
"Don't you worry SE, she'll be back when she gets scared." Abe joked, clapping a hand over Ema's shoulder.  
She turned and shoved him away with surprising force for someone so small. Abe only went a couple steps back, the lanky older boy was about twice her size and she'd never be able to take him in a fair fight.  
She didn't care.  
"You idiot." Her bone thin frame was shaking with fury, "You absolute moron. What the hell were you thinking?"  
"Calm down." He started but she cut him off before he could add anything more.  
"No." She shook her head, "She has the more experience with this of anyone else who's left around here and you went and told her off." She grit her teeth, "How stupid do you have to be?"  
She threw her cloth into a cart and headed back the way they'd come, following the familiar scent of her friend.  
"What are you doing?"  
"I'm going to convince her to come back with us." Ema pulled her jacket around her to block out the cold, "We need her."  
Abe crossed his arms, "SE that's stupid. She's going to come back on her own."  
"No she's going to be every ounce as competitive as we both know she is and wait until someone tells her to come back." She started off again, pulling her phone out of her pocket and shoving earbuds in while she set the playlist to shuffle. Every song on her phone had been put onto one playlist for easy listening to a variety of music. Somehow fate decided to pick the most depressing possible thing.  
 _Hello Darkness my old friend…  
I've come to talk to you again…  
_Well if that wasn't a bad omen she didn't know what was.  
With Simon and Garfunkel thoroughly bumming her out, she shoved the phone into her jacket pocket and ignored Abe's muffled shouts behind her.  
She didn't need her ears to know the Zs were coming into the area; she could smell them a mile away.  
More importantly she could smell Salem heading right toward them.  
The smell intensified unexpectedly.  
She took off running, pumping her legs as hard as she could to catch up, but Salem's scent was getting weak in the intoxicating haze of zombie.  
Salem wasn't going toward the zombies she'd already passed them.  
How was that possible?  
Her foot got caught on a grate, throwing her to the concrete with a nasty thud.  
Closer to the ground the scent was stronger.  
She yanked her foot out and leaned over from the edge of the concrete, peering through the cris crossed metal into the depths of the sewer. Her sensitive eyes caught movement.  
"There's zombies in the sewer." She shook her head, scrambling away from the opening.  
 _And in the naked light I saw…  
Ten thousand people maybe more…  
_She dragged herself to her feet, suddenly terrified. The zombies could get anywhere. They could infect the water. She hardly understood the disease, what if…  
She couldn't think about that. If the disease was in the water they were screwed. She couldn't manufacture her "vaccine" reliably, and infection through regular means wasn't reliable. There was the possibility that not everyone would react as favorably to the virus as she did. If she couldn't work out a way to keep people from getting infected… If the disease could be in the water…  
She didn't want to think about that…  
Suddenly terrified, she yanked the earbuds out and shoved them into her jacket with the rest of the phone, zipping it up as she sniffed the air.  
Asides from the overwhelming stench of the infected below her, the coast seemed clear.  
"Salem!" She was running again, this time more careful about her feet, "Salem where are you!"  
She could smell zombies moving down from the west, towards the sound of her shouting. She'd thought they were a decent ways away but they seemed to be moving faster than the normal ones.  
Her heart was pounding.  
"Salem please!"  
There was a shot to the south, loud, just one, definitely a riffle. Probably Salem.  
She headed in the direction, her friend's scent getting stronger as she drew near the source of the sound.  
Something moaned behind her, sending a chill down her spine.  
Figuring distance by scent wasn't an exact science. She wouldn't have been shocked if she'd missed something.  
Her hand fumbled at her belt, pulling the little .22 caliber handgun out with a slow breath, she didn't normally use it. She had it for humans, not zombies, but she needed blood if she was going to be able to do anything on her own. She needed that smell to be stronger.  
Gritting her teeth she turned around, placing her finger on the trigger and shooting as soon as her eye caught movement.  
The little bullet flew straight into its target, the loud bang putting a ringing noise in her ears.  
There was shouting in the distance.  
She was engulfed in the maddening aroma of the infected.  
Her gun clattered against the pavement as more grotesquely malformed zoms started to approach.  
There was a bang closer to her, like a riffle. More yelling but she couldn't catch what was being said.  
A black and auburn blur in the corner of her eye as Salem's familiar smell mingled with that intoxicating smell of infected blood.  
She caught sight of one of the zoms. One of the fast red ones with claws. They had a name for those. Redrums…. Bloodies… Crimsonheads? She couldn't remember.  
She wanted so badly to sink her teeth into it though. To tear it apart like it tore apart the uninfected.  
She threw herself into the fray, taking anything and everything she could down with her. There was no distinguishing scents now, her world was a red blur of deliciously infected gore.  
And then, as she lunged for a zom it moved, too fast, its claws raking her side before she crashed into a weak, rusty grate. She hardly weighed anything but is creaked under her.  
More shouting sounded above the moans.  
One of the "Crimsonheads" threw itself on top of her. Slamming her against the grate again as it tried to get at her throat.  
And then again.  
She could feel the weakened metal giving beneath her. Just a couple more times and…  
The metal gave, she was tumbling backwards into the abyss that was the sewer. Ferocious zombie still doing its best to kill her.


	5. Pyra

**And then there was backstory! Welcome to part one of three, thanks to Silvergoddess666 for the approval of her character's backstory.**

Salem was 12 when the zombies hit the little town she lived in, and there wasn't any warning what was to come.  
Then again, nobody expects the apocalypse like they claim they do.  
It hit hard and fast, one day she was sitting in her sixth grade English class praying to god something interesting would happen, the next she was locking herself in the closet while her parent's reanimated corpses tried to get at her.  
Suddenly she was wishing that her wishes had been a tad more specific, this was quite the opposite of what she wanted.  
The door groaned as it was pushed in toward her.  
The petite girl scrambled back towards the door, groping against the wall for something to fend them off with.  
The wonderful thing about living in the south is that everyone has a gun.  
She wasn't sure what she was doing and she really wasn't sure what she'd do if her father's shotgun wasn't loaded but she pumped the end like in a movie, pressed herself to the wall and aimed for the door.  
With a loud crack and a shower of splinters the thin barrier between her and her parents broke.  
She fired once, twice, her father was crumpled on the floor but her mother was still having at her.  
In a moment of what she couldn't distinctly define as courage or stupidity she charged, swinging the gun like a bat. She hit something, but she wasn't ready to look back. The twelve year old bolted for the door of her parent's room and slammed it shut behind her, cringing at the sound of her mother scratching against the wood and moaning in that awful way.  
She sprinted for her own room, slamming the door behind her and, in a moment of brilliance, barricading it by pushing over her bookcase in front of it. She wasn't sure if it would hold but it certainly leant her a sense of security.  
Her eyes stung with tears.  
She wasn't sure what was going on at all. Everything was wrong.  
When she'd gotten up that morning her parents had been just fine, sure there was something weird on the news that had gotten her the day off of school but asides from that everything was fine. Halfway through the day her mother had gone out to get groceries and come back mumbling about a crazy hobo. And then within a few hours her parents were trying to kill her.  
What the hell.  
She pulled her school backpack from the side of her bed and dumped its contents on the floor, something told her it wouldn't matter how prepared she was for her history test on Friday.  
She started packing it with miscellaneous items that seemed useful, clothes, a pack of matches and cigarettes she'd stolen from her father's drawer, a sketchbook and her pencil bag, a flashlight with Disney Princesses up the side. Sometimes the survival tools you had on hand weren't the most dignified.  
Almost as an afterthought she grabbed the riffle, which she'd dropped onto her bed, and slung it over her shoulder as something crashed a ways away.  
Not good.  
Ever so carefully, as if noise could make a difference, she undid her window and popped out the screen.  
Yeah this wasn't the first time she'd snuck out of the house, but it certainly was the weirdest.  
Once she hoisted herself out the window she made a dash through the back yard and pitched herself over the fence.  
After about an hour of the ordeal she found herself in a safe place she hadn't even realized she was running to.  
The woods behind her house were dense and in the summer, their thick green leaves obscured the branches from view at a certain point. She didn't have to go terribly far to reach a tree that she could climb, over years of sneaking off to the veritable forest whenever her parents were fighting or she just needed some time alone to draw she'd acquired climbing skills that rivaled those of the native squirrels.  
From her place nestled among the trees she could decompress, pretend that what she'd just went through hadn't happened. She drew the birds that nested in the branches just a little over and eventually fell asleep with a pencil in her hand

There was scratching on her bedroom door, and the screen on the window just wouldn't pop out.  
She glanced back in sheer terror, the door was beginning to crack.  
She shoved harder.  
It still wouldn't budge.  
There was a loud crack behind her.  
Salem spun around her eyes wide as she watched the scene unfold before her.  
She woke up screaming.

Salem climbed down from her place in the tree to retrieve her sketchbook from the ground and after a bit of searching, her fallen pencil. She'd woken up in a panic and accidentally thrown what she was holding to the forest floor.  
Since she was already on the ground she decided to head back towards the houses and investigate, at the very least she wanted to find something to eat.  
Feeling secure in her safety at least while she was in the woods, she pulled out one of her cigarettes and lit it working out how to smoke the thing as she walked.  
She broke down in a coughing fit.  
That really didn't stop her from trying again.  
The apocalypse was here.  
Lung cancer didn't matter.  
She was going to look like a badass and that was final.  
Naturally since she was in the mood to be disobeying every rule her parents ever gave her she made a beeline for the one house on the street she'd been completely barred from.  
Supposedly the old lady who lived there was a witch, which had set Salem's mind ablaze with curiosity.  
She got ready to hop the fence, but the little dog in the yard started yapping through the fence like it thought that would scare her off. Ever so carefully she turned and picked up two sticks from the ground, one small and one relatively thin but a couple feet long.  
Throwing caution to the wind, Salem climbed to sit on top of the fence and threw the stick to the end of the yard opposite the door, sending the little mutt below scampering off after it. She hopped down to the ground and ran for the door, big stick at the ready to batt off the little beagle mix should it decide it wanted to attack.  
She made it to the locked screen door, which she broke open with a few swings of her stick before entering the building. The little dog came running in as she walked into the house, stick proudly clamped in his mouth as he rushed past her ankles.  
"Guess you aren't as mean as you want me to think." she couldn't help but smile as she talked to the little dog.  
Her first course of action was to find the kitchen. It was weirdly similar to the one in her own home, a little run down, but functional. Even the food in the cabinets was familiar.  
She tried not to think about the fact that she was stealing as she made her sandwich, grabbed an apple, and went to eat.

When she was finished with her meal, Salem took a soda from the fridge and began investigating the house. It was surprisingly not very "witchy", which disappointed her, but every once in a while she'd come across a little packet of dried herbs and flowers or runes carved into the side of the table.  
In the bedroom, across from the quilt adorned bed she found a book case with a combination of cook books, old classics and books on witchcraft.  
In the bathroom when she was investigating the jewelry box she found a little silver pentagram its point facing up when she hung it from her neck as an experiment.  
Deciding she liked the feel of it, she kept it. After a few hours of looking around she decided to stay in the house. The little dog seemed not to mind her presence and it didn't seem like the owner intended on coming back. After a few trips through the neighborhood she even managed to patch up the back door.  
Happy with her finds, she curled up with one of the witchcraft books, sincerely curious what was inside, and read in the livingroom well into the night.

After taking care of the dog Salem set out on her "borrowed" bike to go scavenging for food. It had been two years since the zombies had come, and she hadn't seen a single human since.  
Well that wasn't true, she'd seen plenty of bodies and zombies, just not anyone still capable of speech. She'd long since started mumbling to herself throughout the day.  
Her schedule was simple.  
Take care of the dog.  
Eat.  
Scavenge.  
Come back.  
Eat.  
Let the dog out.  
Practice with firearms or hunt.  
Clean house or take care of kill and garden.  
Art.  
Eat.  
Let the dog in.  
Art and/or reading.  
Couldn't have been better.  
Things went fine until she came back. Normally the scrappy little mutt she took care of alongside the house would be yapping his head off, but now he was silent.  
The door was smashed to the ground.  
Even the birds had stopped singing.  
Salem put out her cigarette and pumped her shotgun, "Get your ass out here if you're alive!"  
Nothing.  
She put her bike in its place and stalked into the house, whistling in hope that the dog would come running to her.  
She stepped in part of him.  
The reanimated majority of his corpse attacked her until she shot it in the head.  
Part of her was nagging that it was a nightmare.  
Most of her knew, as always, that it was real.  
There was a moan behind her. On instinct the scrawny fourteen year old spun around and shot on instinct.  
Thrown back, splattering blood all over Salem's off white wall was a mutated, hardly recognizable corpse.  
She was going to be sick.  
After that she decided it might be time to move but she never found such a nice place again though.  
She found something more addictive than nicotine when she lit the house on fire as she left.

"Hello?"  
"Hello?"  
"Who is this?"  
"My name's Salem Coventry."  
"You aren't on the registrar."  
"The what?"  
"Where are you?"  
"Heathsgarden."  
"The little town just a bit south of Foxwood?"  
"Yeah."  
"There's nobody in Heathsgarden, we looked, everyone's dead."  
"I'm here."  
"You sound pretty young."  
"I'm 15."  
"Jeez kid. How did you even reach me?"  
"Luck."  
"Can you tell me exactly where you are?"  
"I'm in the bank vault. I locked myself in. They're all outside. I can't fight them off."  
"I'll send a team to get you."  
"Thanks."  
"Just hang in there."

Salem wasn't like the other kids. They were all looking forward to the next harvest celebration or the spoils of a scouting mission or the cure or the next dance. She was just waiting for the worst.  
They didn't like her very much, her quiet pessimism scared them off she supposed. But she couldn't help but notice that she wasn't the only one they seemed to avoid.  
There was a frustrated little blonde that was always sitting in the corner, her knee bobbing with pent up energy and her freckled nose buried in a book way above the level of the classes they were taking.  
"Why don't you talk to anyone?" Salem asked as she took the desk next to her.  
The blonde, one of the few people as small as (or maybe even smaller than) Salem looked up from a book on virology that had been dog eared and highlighted into oblivion, "Because they aren't very bright. You?"  
"They're very superficial, though I suppose intelligence has to do with it."  
The little blonde cracked a smile, "I can't deny that. You're the girl that called from the bank a few towns over right? Salem. Is that really your name or did you just say that to keep with the scary scary witch theme?"  
"It's really my name." The auburn haired girl leaned forward, "My mother was from Salem, Oregon."  
"That's brilliant." The little blonde set her book to the side, "Ema Schrödinger."  
"Like the cat?"  
"Like the scientist that wrote the theory about the cat." Ema was fully grinning now, "But that's just about the most intelligent thing I've heard recently."  
"You want to go burn something?"  
"I have a copy of Watership Down that's been begging to see the flames for a year now."  
Salem rose an eyebrow, "Let's go get it."  
The little blonde's eyes flashed with mischief, "You're a real pyro you know? No Pyra. I like that feminine and accurate."  
"I'll take it."  
She tucked her book under her arm and walked right out the door, ignoring the teacher's arguments against it as Salem walked beside her.  
It was nice not to be alone.


	6. Rioter

**Welcome to Backstory part 2/3. Let's jump right in shall we?  
This has Abe's Official Seal of Approval.- Here by request of the person who owns Abe's character **

Abraham Marcus Lyall came from a poor family, no, poor was an understatement. His family was destitute. His father died of a drug overdose when Abe was 9, though by that time he was quickly becoming a master thief.  
And then he found parkour.  
Oh dear sweet lord on high parkour.  
Within minutes of finding the sport Abe was obsessed, working out ways to throw himself up walls, jump from roof to roof, anything acrobatic and flagrantly dangerous.  
Whenever he wasn't working his way through homework (which felt amazingly unimportant) or stealthily borrowing food and other necessities from the local stores to keep his mother and sister from dying of malnutrition, he was practicing. He was constantly covered in scrapes and bruises, he learned to disguise a sprained ankle with shocking proficiency, once he even broke his shoulder falling off a roof when he didn't quite make the leap. The pain didn't matter so long as he got that exhilarating thrill.  
Around twelve he managed to steal a box set of an anime, and seeing the ninjas set him right on the track to finding a new use for his hobby.  
Carefully altering parquor to be silent and hidden, he started using his capabilities for thievery and his hauls tripled. He managed to perfect the art by 14.  
His fortune just wasn't meant to be, within two years of the breakthrough that had his family fed the zoms came.  
"Nat, close the door!"  
"But mom!"  
"Nat I said close the door!"  
Abe didn't have the heart to tell his little sister that he'd shot their mother several miles back as they fled the slums they called home, especially not when she was staring at him with those tear filled blue eyes. She threw the door closed and moved out of the way while he started everything he could in front to barricade it while she watched in utter terror.  
Satisfied nothing would get through he took her by the wrist and dragged her up the stairs of the abandoned building, hoping to find a door to the roof.  
"Abe I'm scarred!" She was crying full on now, sobbing even.  
"I know, I know." He couldn't stop moving, he had to get them out of the city, or at the very least to the edge so he could get them out when the sun came up in the morning. "There's not much I can do about that."  
"I want to stop and wait for mom!"  
"We can't!" The building was five stories tall, they'd gone up two.  
She halted, and he very nearly pulled her over, "I want to wait on mom!"  
He could hear the zombies against the door below.  
"We can't stop Nat. She'll find us. Right now we need to worry about not letting them catch us." He kneeled down in front of her, straightening her yellow-blonde hair. "I know you're scared but I need you to be brave for me okay? Just keep running."  
She was biting on her cheek.  
"Natalia, please." He wiped a few tears from her eyes, "We need to go."  
She was only 8 years old. This was way too much for her.  
Nat sniffled and nodded, "O-Okay."  
Relief swept over Abe, "Good." He stood and took her hand, "Let's go."  
They were on the fourth floor when he heard the door give and his barricade start screeching across the floor.  
"Abe-"Natalia started nervously. He started throwing open doors.  
Wrong.  
Wrong.  
Wrong.  
Finally he came across the door leading to the stairs, "Up we go."  
He shoved his little sister in toward the stairs and slammed the door behind them, "Go!"  
The little blonde obeyed without question, panting as she approached and threw open the door to the roof.  
She stopped when she reached the open air, taking a deep breath.  
Abe hauled her onto his back in one smooth motion that had him rather impressed with himself and kept running, making a leap for the next roof.  
Somehow running parkour with a heavy backpack was turning out to be very helpful in the apocalypse.  
Who knew?  
Natalie screamed when they hit the next roof, but Abe just grit his teeth and kept going.  
The sun was going down, it would be difficult to keep going once it really started to get dark.  
And his sister wasn't helping him focus at all.  
After a few more roofs he finally decided to stop as the sun sank down behind the skyline. He let his little sister off of his back and checked at the door to the roof, finding it blessedly locked and dang near impossible to open.  
"We're going to sleep here."  
Natalie stared at him incredulously, "What?"  
"Here. We sleep on the roof."  
She nodded slowly, "Alright."  
The boy shrugged off his thin cotton jacket and handed it over to her, "Go make yourself comfortable."  
He plopped down onto the ground in front of the door, closing his eyes and letting his body relax.  
"Abe?"  
"Hm?"  
"I'm scared." Natalie came and sat beside him.  
He put an arm around her, "I know."

People were rioting in the streets, attracting zombies from miles away. He stared down into the crowd watching the police attempt to fight off a quickly changing horde of rioters trying to escape the city.  
"Do you think they'll be letting up any time soon?" Natalie asked, peeking over the edge to the violence below, "I'm hungry."  
Abe looked over to her, "Well considering they've been here since this morning and are still going strong? I'm gonna say no."  
She sighed, "Can't you just start running over the rooftops then?"  
"We're safe up here and if I fall we're dead."  
"What about going down?"  
"We can't get the door open."  
She groaned and flopped onto the smooth cement, "I'm so bored!"  
"So am I." He had to admit, at first there'd been a factor of morbid entertainment to watching the crowd but after about half an hour that had faded.  
She lay down next to him.  
"You want to play twenty questions?"  
"Sure. Why not."

By noon on the second day, Abe's patience was long since passed, "You stay up here, I'm going down."  
"But-"  
"We need food, or at the very least water." Abe looked down into the writhing crowd of police and civilians, a weapon wouldn't be bad either. "You stay here."  
"Abe!" She was tearing up. Poor little Natalia had been doing so well about not crying to.  
He grinned, faking confidence to keep his little sister calm, "Chill out Nat, I'll be back."  
He started dropping himself down the wall into the horde, there wasn't any point to trying to avoid it; the things were everywhere.  
He could see Natalia watching him over the edge until he threw himself into the mass, surviving only on virtue of his honed agility until he managed to rip a riot shield off of some poor, recently turned riot officer's shield. That in hand he could manage to fend off the zombies.  
He found himself thrown to the ground, but he was lucky enough to keep the zombie on his shield until groping on the ground landed him a heavy black stick to attack it with.  
The combination of weapons and agility gave him the chance to fight his way through the crowd and start hunting for somewhere to get food.

"Hey there kid where you at?"  
"A place."  
"Look we can't help you unless we know where you are."  
"Don't need your help."  
"Is there anyone with you that might need help?"  
Natalia came to mind.  
"Do you mind if I go and find the address where they're at?"  
"Just call back okay hon?"

Abe had always been close with his sister; asides from their mostly despondent mother she was the only family he had left.  
Most siblings fought a lot, but not Abe and Natalia, sure they had the occasional row but for the most part they got along swimmingly. He spoiled her with stolen sweets and dolls and she always reacted with excitement, even when their mother reprimanded him for his antics she was happy to see him.  
He was her protector, her guardian, and that was something he took great pride in. He was going to get her through collage and everything. Give her a real shot at life.  
That was his job as her big brother, look after her and get her where she needed to be.  
His optimism was renewed now that there was a real shot at helping her. He raced back to the building he found her in, fighting his way up a few buildings over parkouring his way over in a rush of excitement.  
The roof was empty. The door was open

Abe searched rooftops well into the night, but he had no luck. He searched rooftops for days, nothing.  
Natalia was gone.  
He'd failed.  
The scrawny teenager was suddenly alone, hit by the full brunt of everything that had happened.  
He shot his mother.  
His little sister was gone.  
She was probably dead.  
The apocalypse was in full swing.  
Abe sat down on the roof of a building, looking down into the park.  
"Hey."  
"Hey there, did you find them."  
"No."  
"Oh… Do you still want to stay there?"  
"No."  
"So where are you?"  
"I'm near Klyde Warren Park."  
"In Dallas?"  
"Yeah."  
"That's… That's quite a ways away from where I am."  
"So I'm on my own?"  
"No, no we can get you it may just take a while."  
"I can wait."  
"We'll be there as soon as we can. Can you stay where you are?"  
"Yeah."  
"Do that."  
"Okay."

He didn't like to deal with the other kids. Really he didn't like to deal with anyone. He skipped his classes. He snacked all the time since food was relatively available. He really just wanted to be alone.  
He was sitting on a ledge when a pair of girls passed under.  
Neither of them were very big but the smaller of the two was brandishing a thick copy of a book with a rabbit on the front and excitedly chattering to her companion in a flurry of words so complicated it sounded like she was speaking another language.  
The other girl, a tiny thing with auburn hair was nodding along, though the wire hanging from her ear suggested she wasn't listening. Not to the blonde at least.  
Though her wicked grin suggested she was every ounce as excited for the mischief they'd be getting into.  
He recognized the auburn haired girl, she frequently skipped class and hung around the halls listening to music and drawing. The other one was unfamiliar though, which was surprising considering that the distinctive blue streaks in her hair should have set her apart from the crowd.  
Curiosity led him to jump down and follow the girls out of the building and to the courtyard, watching curiously as the girls gathered wood, organized their kindling and eventually built up a rather impressive fire.  
The auburn haired girl was grinning maniacally as they started ripping pages from the book and throwing them into the fire.  
"What the heck are you doing?" Abe's own voice surprised him, he hadn't really initiated conversation since the call to the local communications office that had gotten him picked up.  
The red haired girl glanced to the blaze, "What does it look like we're doing? We're making a fire."  
"You're tearing up a book."  
"We're tearing up a pretentious, poorly made excuse for a piece of literature." The little blonde ripped another page from the book and cast it to the flames. "Might I inquire as to what you're doing?"  
"Investigating."  
The girls looked to each other and then shrugged.  
"Want to burn shit with us?" The auburn haired girl asked.  
He shrugged, "I guess."  
She whipped out a cigarette, "I'm Salem, that's Ema."  
"We're calling her Pyra now." Ema was grinning into the flames as the pages smoldered. "You're that kid from Dallas right?"  
"Yeah."  
"The one that had to fight through a riot?"  
"Yeah."  
"Well Pyra it seems we've got ourselves a Rioter."  
Salem laughed a little, "I suppose so."  
"A rioter, a pyromaniac and a genius."  
"We sound like the beginning of a bad joke."

He didn't like being alone. Well not really alone. What he missed was the girls. Without Ema and Salem he ended up focusing on his previous failures, worse he ended up thinking of how he'd failed them too.  
They were furious with him.  
And Salem was right he really couldn't deal with the other kids at the school, he ended up striking out on his own in frustration.  
He could hear shots in the distance sometimes or surprised moans of zombies, he supposed that meant they were doing fine.  
Natalia started nagging at him again. He'd managed to push her to the back of her mind when he could focus on SE and Pyra and the school. All alone she never stopped worming her way into his mind.  
He really shouldn't have fought with Pyra.  
He really should have listened to SE.  
He really shouldn't have abandoned the school.  
He had to get them back.  
He wasn't ready to think on Natalia yet, but he was ready to reunite with his friends.  
A shot fired in the distance.  
On the bright side, he knew where to start.


	7. Schrödinger

Schrödinger  
The average IQ was 110 points.  
A genius IQ was 130 points.  
Ema Schrödinger's IQ was a staggering 260 points, a number rivalled only by William James Sidis for the place of the highest IQ in recorded history.  
She started working with the CDC as a vaccinologist at the age of 10.  
And at the age of 11 activists ruined that for her in their concern that she would fall into the same emotional trouble that Sidis had. They claimed that her separation from children of her own age would make it hard for her to make or maintain relationships like he had. That she'd live a depressing life like he had.  
Frankly, she felt that her mental health was none of their business, but that didn't keep her employers from firing her to duck their wrath. Or keep her from getting forced into a public high school even after she moved to avoid just that.  
What it did prevent was having her work on a vaccine that could have prevented thousands of deaths.  
The zombies hit town shortly after she turned twelve.  
Needless to say, as she sat in her little apartment watching the local newscaster blabber on about the "zombie plague" that started in California and was now making its way through North Texas there was nothing but frustration running through her mind.  
When it got into their town she barricaded the door and sat in front of it, holding her illegally owned .22 in one hand and a copy of The Grand Design in the other.  
She'd spent months dealing with the mess that was public school, bored out of her mind.  
The students were beneath her intelligence. The teachers were useless. The work was far too easy. Most egregiously she felt that the entire experience was pointless. She'd powered through school on a computer screen exactly because she didn't want to deal with people. Collage she'd attended with other people only because she had to if she wanted a degree from a reputable school. They might have claimed it was good for her social skills to be around other people her age, but really it just made her miserable. She could deal with being the smartest person in the room, she had to; it was the immaturity that made her miserable.  
At this point she was more willing to take her chances with 10 bullets and a hoard of zombies than go to one of the "safe houses" that the city had set up.  
Nothing came through.  
She finished The Grand Design and started on her dog-eared copy of The Iliad.  
She followed the schedule of her clock and rationed her food, keeping up with the miserable crop of vegetables she'd started when she first heard about the plague.  
Days blended together until the only way she really remained aware of how much time had passed was the fact that she marked each day off of her calendar when her clock said it was noon.  
According to that system it was almost three weeks before anything interesting happened.

The door gave in while she was making her dinner, though she had to admit that she hadn't expected it to be axes that took it down.  
And even then her original thought was that it was looters.  
"Either get out of here or I shoot you." She picked her gun up off the counter and turned off the safety, meandering from the tiny kitchen to the living space that took up the majority of the cheap apartment.  
Two men in what looked like a combination of riot armor and random home-made bits, one holding an axe, the other holding a gun. They turned, the one with a gun pointing it right at her before slowly lowering it, "You're just a kid…"  
She rolled her eyes, "Yeah yeah, get out of my home."  
The man with the axe started towards her, "Where are your parents?"  
"I will shoot your ass if you take one more step." She glared straight at him.  
He stopped dead in his tracks, "Look, there's no need for violence. We're going to take you to a safe place and-"  
"And I think I'm in a perfectly safe place." Ema grit her teeth, "Now unless you've got some really good news I suggest you get yourselves out. That is unless you're really hankering for a bullet to the head."  
They set their weapons on the ground, "Look we don't want to hurt you. We heard there was something moving up here, we came to finish clearing out any zoms that might still be in the building."  
"And I'm clearly not a zom."  
"Yes. But you are alone. Where are your parents?"  
"Nowhere near here." She lowered her gun, but didn't take her finger off the trigger. She wanted these guys out and clearly threatening them wasn't going to do the trick.  
"Did they turn?"  
"Don't know. Don't care."  
The men looked at each other, "Look we can't leave you alone up here, it wouldn't be ethical. I need you to come with us before something comes up here and hurts you."  
They were never going to leave her alone. She held her gun up, "I have plenty of bullets and decent aim. I'll shoot you if I for one second think you mean anything malicious."

"Alright Sweetheart, what's your name?"  
"Ema Schrödinger."  
"That sounds familiar…"  
"Schrödinger's cat or Ema Schrödinger highest IQ in recorded history? Look just give me a lab so I can do something beneficial." She glared at the frazzled woman trying to get paperwork in order.  
"Look honey, I know you think you're plenty self-sufficient but-"  
"But I am. Sweet Darwin. Why does no one understand that?" She crossed her arms and slumped into the seat, "Let me go back and live in my frigging apartment. Or better, let me hold an actual job rather than putting me in a school. I already finished that. I have a doctorate for crying out loud. There is not one single solitary reason for me to be in school."  
"Ema you are twelve years old."  
"And I have the mental capacity of a 31 year old. More than able to work and live on my own don't you think?"  
"Ema-"  
"Miss I don't need to be in a school with people that much less intelligent than me. Let me be useful."  
"I'm going to put you in with the Andersons, they have a lovey daughter about your age. I'm sure you'll get along stunningly."  
She ran a hand through her hair, "I am surrounded by idiots."

"Miss Schrödinger, why am I not surprised." The school guidance counselor motioned for her to sit down.  
"Your rhetorical line of questioning fails to prove amusing."  
"You're attitude fails to prove amusing."  
"So does yours."  
He grit his teeth, "Look I know you are frustrated that you have to go through school, most kids are-"  
"I have a doctorate, I have successfully held a long term job as a well-accepted scientist with a world recognized organization, I have absolutely no reason to be here. It is a waste of resources."  
"We've gone over this before."  
"Yes. We have."  
"Miss Schrodinger you mock the student body, you flagrantly disrespect the teacher's authority-"  
"I correct them."  
"That right there. That is why you're in here." He sighed, "And you've entirely dissociated yourself from the student body. Your host family says you barely even interact with them! Miss Schrödinger this isn't healthy."  
"I have no interest in interacting with people who lack intelligence. Maybe if I had the slightest inkling of evidence that they were bright enough to hold a conversation I might but stupid people test my limits." She played with a little magnet sculpture from his desk while she spoke, not bothering to so much as look at him.  
"Look can you just make one friend? Talk to a single solitary person on a regular basis? I swear, it won't kill you."  
"Might kill them."  
"Ema!"  
"What I'm simply implying that the use of words containing more than a couple syllables is liable to cause issues for those of such low intelligence. It would be a shame if the strain just made their little heads implode. She smashed the little magnet structure and looked up to him, an innocent smile on her face, "I'm bored. I'll be leaving now."  
She stood up and set the smashed sculpture on his desk, "Don't call me back in here until you have something to say that I've expressed interest in. Your sessions are tedious and I see no reason to have them when neither of us is making progress."

She sat in the back of classrooms when she could. Finished her work in minutes. Vexed the teachers. Avoided conversation with other students like the plague.  
Her host family got tired of her.  
She started boarding at the school.  
"Why don't you talk to anyone?" She'd been watching the auburn haired witch girl for a while, but she hadn't expected the other girl to approach her.  
"Because they aren't very bright." She answered truthfully, "You?"  
"They're very superficial, though intelligence has to do with it."  
She cracked a smile, "I can't deny that. You're the girl that called from the bank a few towns over right? Salem. Is that really your name or did you just say that to keep with the scary scary witch theme?"  
The witch girl leaned forward curiously, "That's really my name. My mother was from Salem, Oregon."  
"That's brilliant!" The fact that it wasn't even the same Salem amused her enough to set her book aside. "Ema Schrödinger."  
"Like the cat?"  
The fact that the girl even knew that existed was enough to set her grinning, "Like the scientist who wrote about the cat. But that's just about the most intelligent thing I've heard recently."  
"You want to burn something?" The girl's green eyes lit up with the simple, destructive offer.  
"I have a copy of Watership Down that's been asking to see the flames for a year now." The idea of watching anything she dislked fall vicim to the flames was more than perfect.  
The other girl rose an eyebrow, clearly she hadn't expected her to agree, "Let's go get it."  
"You're a real pyro you know." Ema was grinning wildly now, childish mischief filling her head, "No… Pyra. I like that. Feminine and accurate."  
"I'll take it."  
She tucked her book under her arm and headed out the door with Salem, ignoring the teacher's arguments. They headed up to her room and retrieved the correct book before heading outside to make the fire. They were met by a suspicious blonde boy.  
They didn't match her, but they were bright enough to deal with her.  
She could tell already that things were starting to look better.


End file.
